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seriousfic) wrote2011-07-05 12:01 pm
seriousfic) wrote2011-07-05 12:01 pm
DW fic: The Celebrity Exemption (Amy/Rory)
Ah, what better way to celebrate America's independence than by writing a story about a British sci-fi show?
FREEDOM!
Title: The Celebrity Exemption
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,031
Characters/Pairings: Amy/Rory, the Doctor, Vastra/Jenny
Summary: For two thousand years, the Last Centurion stood watch over the Pandorica. Nothing could deter him from his self-imposed duty. Nothing could tempt him away from his lost love. And then Charmed premiered.
After a moment, Amy caught her breath. "Okay, when you factor the ladder in, bunk beds are fine for a honeymoon." She pulled on a nightgown, not sure the Doctor would understand the importance of knocking before he burst in to warn them about a Silurian attack. "I'd rate it above beanbags but below waterbeds." She took top bunk. "You sure you don't want anything to do with my belly-dancing outfit? It's very flattering."
"Nah, my sister took a class on cultural appreciation and ever since, I can't rightly enjoy belly dancing. Or Chinese food." Rory was a fan of bunk beds as well. There was no cuddling and he didn't get woken up in the middle of the night by Amy wiggling around and crying for the Doctor. Which doubly bothered him. Maybe she was having nightmares and maybe she wasn't.
"Alright, but if you do have any fantasies that don't cause white guilt, let me know. I will strip naked, paint myself up, and come at you like a Pict. That's our heritage."
"I don't if I could go for that. The whole Roman thing…" Rory reached up with his foot and prodded Amy's mattress. "Amy, ever since we got married, you've been a lot friskier than before. That seems a little… I don't know… unorthodox?"
Amy hung her head over the side of her bunk. "Hon, you spent thousands of years protecting me while I was… does being in cryogenic suspension count as frigid? Even if we only had a date night once a week, I owe you a lot of dates. Besides, it's not every girl gets a husband who's waited a millennium to touch her. It's very romance novel. I'm liking it."
"Come on, you don't owe me anything."
"Yeah, you're a guy, and I know how guys are. Ya know, priests, they can only go a few decades celibate. It must've been hell on you."
"Oh, it wasn't so bad once they invented Playboy."
"Rory, you had an engagement so long you could've bought a used wedding ring from Henry the 8th."
"My parents always wanted us to have a longer engagement."
Amy rolled out of bed, dropping down next to Rory with surprisingly cat-like reflexes. Rory applauded a little. "Okay, I know you had sex with someone else and I'm okay with it. By now she has to be long-dead and not even ginger. It's just a part of your life I'm curious about, like the old boyfriends I told you all about."
Rory stopped applauding with his hands apart, like he was talking about a fish he'd just caught. "Did you tell me about all of them or just the ones who turned out to be gay?"
Amy knotted her hands in front of herself and bopped in place, face protesting innocence. "Rory, I just want to know whether you had one tragic love affair or were you a Casanova who used your 21st-century wiles to bed countless women? Ancient Greece, all the men were gay, you could've cleaned up on lonely housewives."
Rory took her hand. "Amy, I did not—well, there was one time."
"I knew it! Was she thinner than me?"
"You're going to laugh—remember the night after your Harry Potter marathon, when we talked about the five celebrities we had a free pass on?"
Amy pulled her hand away.
***
"Oy, Doctor, oy! I need the Oncoming Storm right now!" Amy burst into the Doctor's room to find a pajama-clad Time Lord sleeping on a racecar bed. "Doctor?"
The Doctor rubbed sleep from his eyes. "I sleep in a racecar bed now," he yawned. "Racecar beds are cool."
Rory was right behind his wife. "Doctor, if you could please tell Amy to calm down—" He stopped, jaw dropped.
"He sleeps in a racecar bed," Amy explained. "They're cool."
"Yes, very. Now if you could just explain to her that Ally meant nothing to me—"
Amy's head whipped over to Rory. "'Ally' clearly meant something to your penis, Rory!"
The Doctor froze with his fists still buried in his eyes. "I don't suppose you misspoke and were trying to say 'Rory's pen is out of ink.' Because I can fix that, I have a sonic pen. Never runs out of ink, writes My Little Pony fanfiction if you leave it alone."
Amy's teeth snapped shut so hard she had to grit her next words out. "Doctor, pay close attention to the words coming out of my mouth. Rory shagged Alyssa Milano."
The Doctor was yawning again. "Sorry, Rory shagged a lotta cookies?"
"Not a lotta cookies, Alyssa Milano!"
"Well, I don't see how the kind of cookie makes a difference, it's not like you're going to be able to eat them."
Amy slapped her forehead. "Alright, Doctor, first coffee, then the Oncoming Storm."
***
Rory made the coffee while Amy made vague shouty noises at the Doctor until the situation had been laid out.
"So then he added Jennifer Garner and took off Kathleen Turner, when I realized that what with celebrities constantly getting fug or new hotties busting onto the scene—Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Fassbender, the cast of True Blood—that the celebrity exemption list was obsolete. It would save time to stop updating the list and just say you could have sex with five celebrities and that's it."
The Doctor sipped his coffee and made a face. "I'm awake… next time, could you just throw cold water on my head and then give me hot chocolate? This tastes like boiling slush."
Amy looked at the coffee maker. "Oh, it was set to boiling slush."
"So you abolished the celebrity exemption list," the Doctor said. "Takes the fun out of it, don't you think?"
"Oy, how many royals have you had sex with!"
"Well, I tried to tell you about Princess Diane, but you said I was being insensitive…"
"She is the heroine of our times!"
"But anyway," Rory piped up, "in case you were wondering, that is why I had sex with Alyssa Milano."
"Alyssa Milano is not a celebrity!" Amy yelled.
"Eight seasons of Charmed beg to differ! Besides, it was in her Melrose Place days."
Amy paced toward the wall so hard that it seemed for a moment she'd break right through it. She spun around ferociously. "Angelina Jolie, she's a celebrity! If you'd had sex with Angelina Jolie, this would not be a problem!"
"Look at my nose! I'm not going to have sex with Angelina Jolie!"
"Rory, how many times have I told you about your negative self-image? You could have sex with Angelina Jolie if you really wanted to!"
"I met Angelina Jolie once," the Doctor muttered to himself. "Had to stop her army of cyber-orphans. But oh, that's not til 2024, forget I said anything."
"Look," Rory said, sitting down on the Doctor's bed and then thinking better of it and standing up. "I get that you're jealous, but it was years ago! Technically, before we even started dating, so…"
Amy laid her hand on her chest. "Me? Jealous? Of Alyssa Milano? Is she Scottish? Ginger? Does she have a policewoman outfit?"
"Well… yes on the last one."
Amy stormed off. Five seconds later, they heard her scream from the other room. Then she resumed stomping away.
The Doctor clapped Rory on the back. "This is exactly how the Master and I fell out. That Alyssa Milano is a homewrecker."
***
Days passed. The Doctor took Amy and Rory to the most romantic places he could think of, but even though they visited Venice in-between vampire attacks, the fighting just got worse, with Rory now getting angry at Amy for being angry at him, and Amy getting angry at him for being angry at her. Disparaging remarks were cast on male nurses and "not quite strippers."
After a week, the Doctor had had enough.
"Someone scratched 'Having sex against the Pandorica does not count as a threesome' on the bathroom wall," the Doctor said, gravely disappointed. "Maybe you think that's funny, but you know who's going to have to explain that to the next companion? Me. So now I have to explain why my homeworld was destroyed, why my boyfriend is constantly trying to blow up planets, and what a Pandorica is. I hope you're proud of yourselves."
"Well, it wasn't me!" Amy said.
"She spends forever on the loo, it was probably her," Rory said.
"Another thing." The Doctor started pacing. "Since you're married, it might be nice if you could talk to each other."
"We talk to each other!" Amy said.
"We do talk to each other!" Rory said.
"Rory, on Space Station Vorax, when Amy knew how to disarm the star-bomb but was on the other side of the crypto-glass from you, did she tell you which wire to cut or did she use sign language?"
"It was thick glass! He might not've heard me!"
"Space Station Vorax and all those lovely Voraxians are just lucky that Rory also knows sign language."
"Well, Ally and I used to visit this school for deaf children on weekends."
"Ooooh, the perfect Alyssa Milano!" Amy punched the wall.
"Actually, I think she was buying cocaine… no one ever suspects the deaf."
"Talk to each other!" the Doctor stressed. "Right now! Just say what's in your heart of hearts!"
Rory looked at Amy.
Amy looked at Rory.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," he said back.
"Alright, there, good talk," Amy said, turning back to the Doctor.
"That was two words! I've heard more of a discourse between political parties!"
"We're British, it's how we roll."
The Doctor looked downcast. "Rose never stopped speaking to her boyfriend unless she left him behind to travel the universe. Oh, look, now you've got me pining for Rose again! You know where that goes? Me eating an entire pint of ice cream by myself, and you know where that goes? My thighs. You think River likes thunder thighs? You think she goes 'ooh, cellulite, your other incarnations don't have cellulite, I like it so much'? No, she doesn't, except maybe mockingly, so this is where you two get off."
***
"What are we supposed to do in Victorian London?" Amy demanded outside the TARDIS.
"Fix your marriage," the Doctor replied. "I'll be back when you're done. I was thinking of being alone with River for a while anyway, doing some grown-up stuff like riding a tandem bike."
"I'm a ginger! They'll probably burn me at the stake!"
"And I just don't like cravats," Rory said. "I already lived through them once."
"And where are we going to stay?" Amy added. "With our own ancestors? Because that always ends with someone being their own grandparent and I am not doing that!" She looked at Rory. "You know how I feel about my grandpa!"
"He was a Thatcherite," Rory shrugged.
"You can stay with some old friends of mine."
***
"This will be your bedroom, sir," Jenny Watson said, opening the door for Rory. She went across the hall to open one for Amy. "And this will be yours, ma'am. Please don't go into the room at the end of the hall, that's where Madame Vastra sheds. I'm going to go dust something now. If people burst in trying to kill us, there are swords in the chest at the foot of the bed."
"You can stay with us as long as you like," Vastra said. "It would be nice having some help on a few cases. There are some places in this society where a woman just can't go. Rory, how are you at gentlemen's clubs?"
Amy made a high-pitched sound of dismay.
"Amy, this is Victorian England. Here, a gentlemen's club is literally just a club for gentlemen," Rory explained.
"I ask because we have a new case. The Case of the First Ever Stripper."
Amy ran into her room and slammed the door behind her.
"Someone stole the pole dancing pole," Vastra continued.
***
"I'm sewing," Amy said to the knock at the door. Rory didn't know what that meant, so he just came in.
"Jenny fixed soup sandwiches. They're actually pretty good, but the knowledge was lost to the ages, like Greek fire."
"I'm sewing," Amy reiterated. "Because I might as well learn to sew because we are never going to get out of here. We're going to live in Victorian London forever and become our own grandparents."
"Hey, hey, hey," Rory said soothingly, sitting down on the bed beside her. "It's only Victorian London until Queen Victoria dies. After that there's World War I and Art Nouveau and the Titanic, you loved that movie."
"Leo…" Amy muttered. "Rory, promise me something." She looked at him with wet, beaming eyes. "If the Doctor doesn't come back for us, we kill Hitler."
"I would love to kill Hitler with you."
"Good." Amy wiped her eyes. "Maybe this is a good thing, you know? Taking a break from the modern world and all its noise… putting our relationship on hold for a bit while we sort out who we are and why you shagged Alyssa Milano… there's something to be said for that."
***
"OH GOD! OH FUCK! OH, FUCK MY GOD!" Jenny cried.
In the room furthest away from the Jenny-Vastra bedroom but not actually out in the freezing rain, Amy tried to concentrate on her sewing and Rory tried to write a Victorian version of Twilight for Stephenie Meyer to "rip off," just to be a jerk. But it was hard to focus when an entire wing of the house seemed to be in danger of collapsing.
"YOU'RE A GODDESS! YOU'RE A GODDESS, VASTRA! MY GODDESS OF FUCKING!"
"That's Jenny, right?" Amy asked. "I'm so bad with names."
"Yeah, Vastra's the lizard."
"OH SWEET FUCK-GODDESS!"
"I kinda thought they had a thing," Rory mused. "I mean, the French maid outfit?"
"She is a maid, Rory."
"Yeah, but if you're a Silurian, why would you care if your maid wears a maid outfit? Why not jeans and a T-shirt?"
"Because jeans and T-shirts haven't been invented yet?"
"OH NO, NO, THAT DOESN'T GO THERE! FUCK! YES IT DOES! IT DOES!"
Amy tossed her sewing over her shoulder. "You wanna talk about our relationship?"
Rory stopped trying to think up the Victorian equivalent of a Volvo. "Oh, please God, yes. This has already ruined those Geico gecko commercials for me."
"YES, SPANK THAT ASS! IT'S BEEN A NAUGHTY ASS! LOOK AT IT, SO HIGH AND MIGHTY IN ITS GODDAMN THONG!"
"I may have been a little fixated on the idea of you waiting for me so long," Amy admitted. "I know you probably thought about other women and, I don't know, took a few years off guarding me to see Sinatra…"
Rory shook his head. "Amy, I don't even like Sinatra!"
"It's just hypothetical."
"GAG ME ON IT! I WANNA GAG!"
Amy pulled down on her hair while looking up at the ceiling for a good few seconds before meeting Rory's eyes. "I've just never been the most important part of someone's life before. It felt good. But you have a life outside of me, and that's good too."
"I should've told you. I was just worried about letting you down." Rory stood, taking a step toward Amy before holding himself back. "I wait two thousand years to see you again and I get here and… what do we do? Eat fish and chips and watch Skins? I just wanted to forget it ever happened and get back to the way things used to be. That's really all I ever wanted."
Amy got up to face him. "You don't like traveling with the Doctor?"
"I love traveling with you. Hurtling through time and space, sometimes it's a bonus, sometimes it's a minus, but I'll admit, it's never boring."
Amy hugged him.
"OH GOD, SQUIRTING! IT'S GETTING EVERYWHERE!"
Rory patted her back a few times. "You know what? You should have sex with a quasi-celebrity. Make us even. How about Ben Browder?"
"Ben Browder isn't a celebrity," Amy told his chest.
"He was on Farscape and Stargate! Not one of the spin-offs, either, the real deal!"
"Isn't he married?"
"He's a celebrity, he probably has an ordinary person exemption list. You know… redhead, Scottish, funny, unbelievably gorgeous…"
Amy backed up and punched his arm. "Stop!"
"Skirts you need a magnifying glass to see…"
"Oy, never heard you complain!"
"IT HURTS! IT HURTS SO GOOD! YOU BITCH, OH, YOU CRUEL BITCH, HARDER! NO! DON'T STOP! DON'T DARE STOP!"
Just then, the storm burst through the window, splattering Amy and Rory with rain—and the Doctor poked his head in. "Well, you said you wanted the oncoming storm…"
"Doctor!" they both said.
"Oh, I've been waiting for a storm to use that line. And to wear this raincoat." The Doctor twirled around in his canary-yellow rain slicker. "For a while there, I thought I'd only get to wear it in the shower!"
"We thought you'd left and weren't coming back," Amy said excitedly. "We were going to kill Hitler!"
"That's my Pond, always trying to prevent WW2." He ruffled her hair. "I never left, really. I knew you'd only need a little time alone to sort things out, so I just went across town to pick up River. She was stranded here and I had to bring her a new stripper pole."
"River Song was the world's first stripper?" Amy said dubiously.
"I blame the parents," Rory said.
"NO! DON'T! STOP!"
"Oh dear me, someone's in trouble!" The Doctor leapt into the room, tracking mud onto Jenny's fastidiously swept carpet and running to interrupt what sounded like a A-bomb of an orgasm.
Amy held him back. "I think you'd better let her be. I think she'll be fine."
"Better than fine," Rory muttered.
"Amy, I'll never turn my back on a person in need!"
"Trust me, you're not what she needs at the moment."
"HURTS!"
"That tears it!" the Doctor swore, pulling away from her and running down the hall.
A minute later, he returned, ashen-faced, tripping on the carpet as he reentered the room.
"She was… dusting."
FREEDOM!
Title: The Celebrity Exemption
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3,031
Characters/Pairings: Amy/Rory, the Doctor, Vastra/Jenny
Summary: For two thousand years, the Last Centurion stood watch over the Pandorica. Nothing could deter him from his self-imposed duty. Nothing could tempt him away from his lost love. And then Charmed premiered.
After a moment, Amy caught her breath. "Okay, when you factor the ladder in, bunk beds are fine for a honeymoon." She pulled on a nightgown, not sure the Doctor would understand the importance of knocking before he burst in to warn them about a Silurian attack. "I'd rate it above beanbags but below waterbeds." She took top bunk. "You sure you don't want anything to do with my belly-dancing outfit? It's very flattering."
"Nah, my sister took a class on cultural appreciation and ever since, I can't rightly enjoy belly dancing. Or Chinese food." Rory was a fan of bunk beds as well. There was no cuddling and he didn't get woken up in the middle of the night by Amy wiggling around and crying for the Doctor. Which doubly bothered him. Maybe she was having nightmares and maybe she wasn't.
"Alright, but if you do have any fantasies that don't cause white guilt, let me know. I will strip naked, paint myself up, and come at you like a Pict. That's our heritage."
"I don't if I could go for that. The whole Roman thing…" Rory reached up with his foot and prodded Amy's mattress. "Amy, ever since we got married, you've been a lot friskier than before. That seems a little… I don't know… unorthodox?"
Amy hung her head over the side of her bunk. "Hon, you spent thousands of years protecting me while I was… does being in cryogenic suspension count as frigid? Even if we only had a date night once a week, I owe you a lot of dates. Besides, it's not every girl gets a husband who's waited a millennium to touch her. It's very romance novel. I'm liking it."
"Come on, you don't owe me anything."
"Yeah, you're a guy, and I know how guys are. Ya know, priests, they can only go a few decades celibate. It must've been hell on you."
"Oh, it wasn't so bad once they invented Playboy."
"Rory, you had an engagement so long you could've bought a used wedding ring from Henry the 8th."
"My parents always wanted us to have a longer engagement."
Amy rolled out of bed, dropping down next to Rory with surprisingly cat-like reflexes. Rory applauded a little. "Okay, I know you had sex with someone else and I'm okay with it. By now she has to be long-dead and not even ginger. It's just a part of your life I'm curious about, like the old boyfriends I told you all about."
Rory stopped applauding with his hands apart, like he was talking about a fish he'd just caught. "Did you tell me about all of them or just the ones who turned out to be gay?"
Amy knotted her hands in front of herself and bopped in place, face protesting innocence. "Rory, I just want to know whether you had one tragic love affair or were you a Casanova who used your 21st-century wiles to bed countless women? Ancient Greece, all the men were gay, you could've cleaned up on lonely housewives."
Rory took her hand. "Amy, I did not—well, there was one time."
"I knew it! Was she thinner than me?"
"You're going to laugh—remember the night after your Harry Potter marathon, when we talked about the five celebrities we had a free pass on?"
Amy pulled her hand away.
***
"Oy, Doctor, oy! I need the Oncoming Storm right now!" Amy burst into the Doctor's room to find a pajama-clad Time Lord sleeping on a racecar bed. "Doctor?"
The Doctor rubbed sleep from his eyes. "I sleep in a racecar bed now," he yawned. "Racecar beds are cool."
Rory was right behind his wife. "Doctor, if you could please tell Amy to calm down—" He stopped, jaw dropped.
"He sleeps in a racecar bed," Amy explained. "They're cool."
"Yes, very. Now if you could just explain to her that Ally meant nothing to me—"
Amy's head whipped over to Rory. "'Ally' clearly meant something to your penis, Rory!"
The Doctor froze with his fists still buried in his eyes. "I don't suppose you misspoke and were trying to say 'Rory's pen is out of ink.' Because I can fix that, I have a sonic pen. Never runs out of ink, writes My Little Pony fanfiction if you leave it alone."
Amy's teeth snapped shut so hard she had to grit her next words out. "Doctor, pay close attention to the words coming out of my mouth. Rory shagged Alyssa Milano."
The Doctor was yawning again. "Sorry, Rory shagged a lotta cookies?"
"Not a lotta cookies, Alyssa Milano!"
"Well, I don't see how the kind of cookie makes a difference, it's not like you're going to be able to eat them."
Amy slapped her forehead. "Alright, Doctor, first coffee, then the Oncoming Storm."
***
Rory made the coffee while Amy made vague shouty noises at the Doctor until the situation had been laid out.
"So then he added Jennifer Garner and took off Kathleen Turner, when I realized that what with celebrities constantly getting fug or new hotties busting onto the scene—Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Fassbender, the cast of True Blood—that the celebrity exemption list was obsolete. It would save time to stop updating the list and just say you could have sex with five celebrities and that's it."
The Doctor sipped his coffee and made a face. "I'm awake… next time, could you just throw cold water on my head and then give me hot chocolate? This tastes like boiling slush."
Amy looked at the coffee maker. "Oh, it was set to boiling slush."
"So you abolished the celebrity exemption list," the Doctor said. "Takes the fun out of it, don't you think?"
"Oy, how many royals have you had sex with!"
"Well, I tried to tell you about Princess Diane, but you said I was being insensitive…"
"She is the heroine of our times!"
"But anyway," Rory piped up, "in case you were wondering, that is why I had sex with Alyssa Milano."
"Alyssa Milano is not a celebrity!" Amy yelled.
"Eight seasons of Charmed beg to differ! Besides, it was in her Melrose Place days."
Amy paced toward the wall so hard that it seemed for a moment she'd break right through it. She spun around ferociously. "Angelina Jolie, she's a celebrity! If you'd had sex with Angelina Jolie, this would not be a problem!"
"Look at my nose! I'm not going to have sex with Angelina Jolie!"
"Rory, how many times have I told you about your negative self-image? You could have sex with Angelina Jolie if you really wanted to!"
"I met Angelina Jolie once," the Doctor muttered to himself. "Had to stop her army of cyber-orphans. But oh, that's not til 2024, forget I said anything."
"Look," Rory said, sitting down on the Doctor's bed and then thinking better of it and standing up. "I get that you're jealous, but it was years ago! Technically, before we even started dating, so…"
Amy laid her hand on her chest. "Me? Jealous? Of Alyssa Milano? Is she Scottish? Ginger? Does she have a policewoman outfit?"
"Well… yes on the last one."
Amy stormed off. Five seconds later, they heard her scream from the other room. Then she resumed stomping away.
The Doctor clapped Rory on the back. "This is exactly how the Master and I fell out. That Alyssa Milano is a homewrecker."
***
Days passed. The Doctor took Amy and Rory to the most romantic places he could think of, but even though they visited Venice in-between vampire attacks, the fighting just got worse, with Rory now getting angry at Amy for being angry at him, and Amy getting angry at him for being angry at her. Disparaging remarks were cast on male nurses and "not quite strippers."
After a week, the Doctor had had enough.
"Someone scratched 'Having sex against the Pandorica does not count as a threesome' on the bathroom wall," the Doctor said, gravely disappointed. "Maybe you think that's funny, but you know who's going to have to explain that to the next companion? Me. So now I have to explain why my homeworld was destroyed, why my boyfriend is constantly trying to blow up planets, and what a Pandorica is. I hope you're proud of yourselves."
"Well, it wasn't me!" Amy said.
"She spends forever on the loo, it was probably her," Rory said.
"Another thing." The Doctor started pacing. "Since you're married, it might be nice if you could talk to each other."
"We talk to each other!" Amy said.
"We do talk to each other!" Rory said.
"Rory, on Space Station Vorax, when Amy knew how to disarm the star-bomb but was on the other side of the crypto-glass from you, did she tell you which wire to cut or did she use sign language?"
"It was thick glass! He might not've heard me!"
"Space Station Vorax and all those lovely Voraxians are just lucky that Rory also knows sign language."
"Well, Ally and I used to visit this school for deaf children on weekends."
"Ooooh, the perfect Alyssa Milano!" Amy punched the wall.
"Actually, I think she was buying cocaine… no one ever suspects the deaf."
"Talk to each other!" the Doctor stressed. "Right now! Just say what's in your heart of hearts!"
Rory looked at Amy.
Amy looked at Rory.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," he said back.
"Alright, there, good talk," Amy said, turning back to the Doctor.
"That was two words! I've heard more of a discourse between political parties!"
"We're British, it's how we roll."
The Doctor looked downcast. "Rose never stopped speaking to her boyfriend unless she left him behind to travel the universe. Oh, look, now you've got me pining for Rose again! You know where that goes? Me eating an entire pint of ice cream by myself, and you know where that goes? My thighs. You think River likes thunder thighs? You think she goes 'ooh, cellulite, your other incarnations don't have cellulite, I like it so much'? No, she doesn't, except maybe mockingly, so this is where you two get off."
***
"What are we supposed to do in Victorian London?" Amy demanded outside the TARDIS.
"Fix your marriage," the Doctor replied. "I'll be back when you're done. I was thinking of being alone with River for a while anyway, doing some grown-up stuff like riding a tandem bike."
"I'm a ginger! They'll probably burn me at the stake!"
"And I just don't like cravats," Rory said. "I already lived through them once."
"And where are we going to stay?" Amy added. "With our own ancestors? Because that always ends with someone being their own grandparent and I am not doing that!" She looked at Rory. "You know how I feel about my grandpa!"
"He was a Thatcherite," Rory shrugged.
"You can stay with some old friends of mine."
***
"This will be your bedroom, sir," Jenny Watson said, opening the door for Rory. She went across the hall to open one for Amy. "And this will be yours, ma'am. Please don't go into the room at the end of the hall, that's where Madame Vastra sheds. I'm going to go dust something now. If people burst in trying to kill us, there are swords in the chest at the foot of the bed."
"You can stay with us as long as you like," Vastra said. "It would be nice having some help on a few cases. There are some places in this society where a woman just can't go. Rory, how are you at gentlemen's clubs?"
Amy made a high-pitched sound of dismay.
"Amy, this is Victorian England. Here, a gentlemen's club is literally just a club for gentlemen," Rory explained.
"I ask because we have a new case. The Case of the First Ever Stripper."
Amy ran into her room and slammed the door behind her.
"Someone stole the pole dancing pole," Vastra continued.
***
"I'm sewing," Amy said to the knock at the door. Rory didn't know what that meant, so he just came in.
"Jenny fixed soup sandwiches. They're actually pretty good, but the knowledge was lost to the ages, like Greek fire."
"I'm sewing," Amy reiterated. "Because I might as well learn to sew because we are never going to get out of here. We're going to live in Victorian London forever and become our own grandparents."
"Hey, hey, hey," Rory said soothingly, sitting down on the bed beside her. "It's only Victorian London until Queen Victoria dies. After that there's World War I and Art Nouveau and the Titanic, you loved that movie."
"Leo…" Amy muttered. "Rory, promise me something." She looked at him with wet, beaming eyes. "If the Doctor doesn't come back for us, we kill Hitler."
"I would love to kill Hitler with you."
"Good." Amy wiped her eyes. "Maybe this is a good thing, you know? Taking a break from the modern world and all its noise… putting our relationship on hold for a bit while we sort out who we are and why you shagged Alyssa Milano… there's something to be said for that."
***
"OH GOD! OH FUCK! OH, FUCK MY GOD!" Jenny cried.
In the room furthest away from the Jenny-Vastra bedroom but not actually out in the freezing rain, Amy tried to concentrate on her sewing and Rory tried to write a Victorian version of Twilight for Stephenie Meyer to "rip off," just to be a jerk. But it was hard to focus when an entire wing of the house seemed to be in danger of collapsing.
"YOU'RE A GODDESS! YOU'RE A GODDESS, VASTRA! MY GODDESS OF FUCKING!"
"That's Jenny, right?" Amy asked. "I'm so bad with names."
"Yeah, Vastra's the lizard."
"OH SWEET FUCK-GODDESS!"
"I kinda thought they had a thing," Rory mused. "I mean, the French maid outfit?"
"She is a maid, Rory."
"Yeah, but if you're a Silurian, why would you care if your maid wears a maid outfit? Why not jeans and a T-shirt?"
"Because jeans and T-shirts haven't been invented yet?"
"OH NO, NO, THAT DOESN'T GO THERE! FUCK! YES IT DOES! IT DOES!"
Amy tossed her sewing over her shoulder. "You wanna talk about our relationship?"
Rory stopped trying to think up the Victorian equivalent of a Volvo. "Oh, please God, yes. This has already ruined those Geico gecko commercials for me."
"YES, SPANK THAT ASS! IT'S BEEN A NAUGHTY ASS! LOOK AT IT, SO HIGH AND MIGHTY IN ITS GODDAMN THONG!"
"I may have been a little fixated on the idea of you waiting for me so long," Amy admitted. "I know you probably thought about other women and, I don't know, took a few years off guarding me to see Sinatra…"
Rory shook his head. "Amy, I don't even like Sinatra!"
"It's just hypothetical."
"GAG ME ON IT! I WANNA GAG!"
Amy pulled down on her hair while looking up at the ceiling for a good few seconds before meeting Rory's eyes. "I've just never been the most important part of someone's life before. It felt good. But you have a life outside of me, and that's good too."
"I should've told you. I was just worried about letting you down." Rory stood, taking a step toward Amy before holding himself back. "I wait two thousand years to see you again and I get here and… what do we do? Eat fish and chips and watch Skins? I just wanted to forget it ever happened and get back to the way things used to be. That's really all I ever wanted."
Amy got up to face him. "You don't like traveling with the Doctor?"
"I love traveling with you. Hurtling through time and space, sometimes it's a bonus, sometimes it's a minus, but I'll admit, it's never boring."
Amy hugged him.
"OH GOD, SQUIRTING! IT'S GETTING EVERYWHERE!"
Rory patted her back a few times. "You know what? You should have sex with a quasi-celebrity. Make us even. How about Ben Browder?"
"Ben Browder isn't a celebrity," Amy told his chest.
"He was on Farscape and Stargate! Not one of the spin-offs, either, the real deal!"
"Isn't he married?"
"He's a celebrity, he probably has an ordinary person exemption list. You know… redhead, Scottish, funny, unbelievably gorgeous…"
Amy backed up and punched his arm. "Stop!"
"Skirts you need a magnifying glass to see…"
"Oy, never heard you complain!"
"IT HURTS! IT HURTS SO GOOD! YOU BITCH, OH, YOU CRUEL BITCH, HARDER! NO! DON'T STOP! DON'T DARE STOP!"
Just then, the storm burst through the window, splattering Amy and Rory with rain—and the Doctor poked his head in. "Well, you said you wanted the oncoming storm…"
"Doctor!" they both said.
"Oh, I've been waiting for a storm to use that line. And to wear this raincoat." The Doctor twirled around in his canary-yellow rain slicker. "For a while there, I thought I'd only get to wear it in the shower!"
"We thought you'd left and weren't coming back," Amy said excitedly. "We were going to kill Hitler!"
"That's my Pond, always trying to prevent WW2." He ruffled her hair. "I never left, really. I knew you'd only need a little time alone to sort things out, so I just went across town to pick up River. She was stranded here and I had to bring her a new stripper pole."
"River Song was the world's first stripper?" Amy said dubiously.
"I blame the parents," Rory said.
"NO! DON'T! STOP!"
"Oh dear me, someone's in trouble!" The Doctor leapt into the room, tracking mud onto Jenny's fastidiously swept carpet and running to interrupt what sounded like a A-bomb of an orgasm.
Amy held him back. "I think you'd better let her be. I think she'll be fine."
"Better than fine," Rory muttered.
"Amy, I'll never turn my back on a person in need!"
"Trust me, you're not what she needs at the moment."
"HURTS!"
"That tears it!" the Doctor swore, pulling away from her and running down the hall.
A minute later, he returned, ashen-faced, tripping on the carpet as he reentered the room.
"She was… dusting."